Del.icio.us
Digg
Reddit
Facebook
StumbleUpon
TwitThisHypothermia Kills
The 911 calls brought Fire Chief Ira Walker, Jr., and EMS 1st Lieutenant Dave Ober of the Eureka Volunteer Fire & Ambulance Company. They’d been out on duty in other storm-ravaged spots in the county when the first emergency alert told them that a “child” was caught in a storm drain.
The message was like a blow to the stomach. Four years earlier, during a similar downpour on Mother’s Day, they’d received a call that a woman and her child were trapped in a car in a raging stream. When Ober’s crew first arrived, they stretched the fire truck’s tower ladder as far as they could, but it was too short. Ober had watched helplessly as the water lifted the car from its perch and sent it tumbling down the stream. Neither mother nor child survived.
“The fire rescue is coming, Matt,” Rhonda told her son when she heard the sirens. “Keep fighting.” Matt couldn’t respond. He’d been in the water for nearly a half hour and was chilled to the bone.
Ober arrived first and ushered the frantic mother away to the side. Walker couldn’t swim and was terrified of this kind of water, but he felt compelled to do something. A former all-county lineman on his high school’s football team, the 270-pound Walker believed he could easily boost Matt out.
In his haste to help, though, Walker miscalculated. He stepped over the edge of the culvert and fell in. Just before he pitched under, his men grabbed him. But one of his legs was bent down and around the lip, the other stretched out above. He was pinioned at the groin, half of his body underwater, but he was now closer to Matt and better able to get a grip down low around him.
For protection, Walker put on a harness and had the rope tied to the bumper of the fire engine. He and Matt were now almost side by side. The teen had been remarkably calm, but now Walker heard his tired, quiet voice. “Don’t let me die,” he said.
Walker wrapped his arms around the boy and used all his strength to free him. But the big man was dumbfounded to discover he couldn’t move the boy an inch from the fluid force.
Walker and Ober could see the effect of the cold, rushing water chilling Matt. Hypothermia kills. They were afraid he’d give in to the cold and give up before the water receded.
About that time, a tow truck driver, who was also a volunteer firefighter, arrived. He’d picked up the report about the incident on his pager. Together the assembled men wrapped a two-inch nylon strap around Matt’s torso and connected it to the tow truck’s winch cable. Then the driver carefully cranked up the machine until the cable was taut, to hold Matt in place. But even with the truck’s support, the men couldn’t free him.
On the sidelines, Rhonda Richards was distraught. She wanted to return to Matt, but people held her back and tried to comfort her.
Advertisement 
